I remember fifty years ago, when our high school teacher told us that in the future the average work week would be 30-35 hours so everyone could have a job, as there would be too many people to give everyone a 40 hour weekly job.

Looks like they were correct.

9 posted on 11/11/2012 8:14:08 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar
(The parasites now outnumber the producers.)

Here’s what is real scary, the day that only one person in a household will be able to work a full-time job. Technology is making the number of jobs needed less and less with each passing year, so the argument will be, why should their be two wage earners in a house when there are so many others who can’t even get one job?

In some ways he's got it all wrong. Nowadays, especially in professional jobs that require a lot of skill and education, the trend is to have fewer employees work more hours, not the other way around.

If you have work that typically requires a professional staff to spend 120 per week getting the job done, you're better off hiring two employees and having them work 60-hour weeks than three employees with 40-hour weeks. You end up saving money even if you pay the two employees 50% more to compensate them for the extra time they work. For one thing, most employee benefits (sick time, vacation time, medical insurance (think about this in the context of Obamacare), etc.) are fixed costs regardless of how many hours someone works. Secondly, having two employees instead of three means you can get away with one-third less office space for the work.